Editor’s note: Simon Rushton is an associate Fellow at Chatham House’s Centre on Global Health Security. The views expressed are the writer’s own.

In his comments in the lead up to World AIDS Day this Sunday, UNAIDS Executive Director Michel Sidibé reiterated the organization’s view that every person counts. “If we are going to keep our pledge of leaving no-one behind we have to make sure HIV services reach everyone in need.” Yet although the updated statistics on HIV and AIDS released this week show remarkable progress in many areas, they also make clear that some are indeed being left behind.

The headline figures are encouraging: a 33 percent decrease in new HIV infections since 2001; a 29 percent decrease in AIDS-related deaths since 2005; a 40-fold increase in access to antiretroviral therapy between 2002 and 2012. But as UNAIDS also admits, global progress in the fight against AIDS is highly uneven. The situation varies widely between countries and regions. In some of the most populous parts of the world – such as the Middle East and East Asia – both new HIV infections and AIDS-related deaths have actually increased over the past decade.

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By Global Public Square staff

The world has welcomed another batch of Nobel Laureates for accomplishments in the sciences, literature, and global peace. But there is another prize, perhaps just as important, for which there was no winner.

We are talking about the Mo Ibrahim Prize, established by the Sudanese billionaire Mo Ibrahim. The criteria for winning are listed publicly on the prize website: You need to be a democratically elected African head of state that has left office in the last three years, and demonstrated excellent leadership. If you meet the criteria, you get a $5 million award, plus an annual pension of $200,000 that kicks in after a decade.

The point, of course, is to provide a financial incentive for African leaders to shun corruption. And yet, for the fourth time in its seven year history, the awards committee was unable to find a winner from any of Africa's 50-plus countries. Bravo to the Ibrahim prize for holding high standards, even if that means no grand ceremony.

As we watch these protests around the globe, we should keep in mind that the distinctive feature of the American system is actually not how democratic it is, but rather how undemocratic it is.

What do I mean? Well, we have three co-equal branches of government and the one with the final say on many issues, the Supreme Court, is composed of 9 unelected men and women. The American senate is the most unrepresentative upper house in the democratic universe, with the exception of Britain's House of Lords, which is utterly powerless. California's 38 million people have the same representation in the Senate as do Wyoming's 576,000. State and local governments battle federal power constantly. Private businesses and other non-governmental groups are also part of the mix.

Now there are aspects of this system that many Americans don't like – especially the abuse of the system by largely invented practices like the filibuster – but the basic system of checks and balances, as the famous phrase goes, has worked well.

The form of government that came out of the French revolution, by contrast, is one of absolute sovereignty, centralizing all power at the top. Since that revolution, France has had many upheavals and changes in its regime. It went through two monarchies, two empires, one proto-fascist dictatorship, and five republics before it got to the present regime. The United States, by contrast, has had a continuous constitutional existence since 1789.

We tend to think of dictators as all-powerful leaders who act with naked cruelty and impunity. Think of Bashar al Assad in Syria. Or, for a celluloid reminder, think of Sacha Baron Cohen as Gen. Admiral Aladeen, a North African despot.

But the film "The Dictator" — and our imagination of dictators — is getting outdated. The new dictator is more evolved and more attuned to how people think.

Dictators have gotten smart, Dobson writes, to keep pace with changes in technology. Old-school oppressors like Mao, Pol Pot or Idi Amin could keep their atrocities relatively secret. That's not possible today. If a dictator tried to orchestrate a mass killing and keep it secret, he'd likely fail. It would end up on YouTube. FULL POST

I was browsing through the website of the magazine Foreign Affairs when I came across an article titled “The Present Crisis in Democracy.” The author describes dire times: a world “in a state of hysteria” where an “intoxication of unusual prosperity” was followed by “the harassing uncertainty of the depression.”

From finance boom to housing bust, it reads like a description of inept governance in the last decade.

But it’s not. The article was written in 1934 by Lawrence Lowell, a former president of Harvard University and frequent contributor to Foreign Affairs.

It turns out we’ve always talked about a “crisis in democracy.” A Google search of the phrase throws up articles written not only from the past few years, but from almost every decade of the 20th century.

Editor’s Note: The following piece, exclusive to GPS, comes from Wikistrat, the world's first massively multiplayer online consultancy. It leverages a global network of subject-matter experts via a crowd-sourcing methodology to provide unique insights.

America is in the midst of yet another long-term government deficit problem that we once thought we had licked in the go-go Nineties. Remember when we were going to retire the federal debt?

Just like back then, political candidates now regularly foam at the mouth about which “redundant” federal agencies they’d whack the minute they set foot inside the Beltway. This begs the question: What activities are inherently federal? FULL POST

Over the past decade U.S. job gains were matched by job losses. Simply put, there was no net gain in jobs. During the George W. Bush years, job growth was almost entirely fueled by growth in government, health care and the massive boom in residential real estate. From 2001 to 2007, investment in equipment and software — the kinds of investments that boost productivity and create good jobs — declined 15 percent as a share of gross domestic product. The economy recovered after the recession of 2000, but the recovery was powered almost entirely by government spending, cheap credit and a real estate bubble.

In contrast, the current recovery, while anemic in terms of number of jobs created, is more broad-based and more durable. Business investment is rising, having boomed 18 percent since the end of 2009. Manufacturing has rebounded faster than other sectors, adding 334,000 jobs over the past two years. Exports are growing at an annualized rate of 16 percent, which means that U.S. exports should double earlier than 2014, the goal President Obama set in 2009. Labor productivity in the United States is now the highest among Group of 20 countries, and this boost means that unit labor costs in the United States have dropped more than in any G-20 country except Taiwan. FULL POST

Both the Occupy Wall Street and Tea Party Movements are skeptical of the claim that government can be smart when the political system has been captured by moneyed interests. In response, the Obama administration maintains that we can somehow restore America to greatness while tolerating politics as usual, even though candidate Obama once promised he would “change the way Washington works.” Small wonder the electorate is starting to tune out.

There is a better way. The crony capitalism that has fueled inequality and systematically undermined the social contract thrives in the shadows. Rather than railing at the rich, which many Americans have misinterpreted as mocking the American dream, the White House should instead refocus on the imperative of openness for democracy. FULL POST

Last week, I wrote a TIME column, Complexity Equals Corruption, in which I argued that Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 tax-reform plan is not as crazy as many pundits make it out to be. I didn’t defend Cain’s specific policy proposals but rather their general thrust: The federal tax code is too complex and fundamentally corrupt.

But what got readers riled up was my support for a 50% inheritance tax. I wrote, “Nothing is more un-American than an inherited elite that perpetuates itself.” The condemnation was fast and furious.

But we all need to take a moment to remember that the inheritance tax was 55% before the George W. Bush tax cuts! I'm not suggesting anything that strange - just a reversion to the norm before the Bush tax cuts.

And yes, I would favor an exemption for the first couple of million dollars, which would means that the vast majority of small businesses would pay no estate tax at all.

Next year will mark the 100th anniversary of Milton Friedman’s birth. Friedman was one of the twentieth century’s leading economists, a Nobel Prize winner who made notable contributions to monetary policy and consumption theory. But he will be remembered primarily as the visionary who provided the intellectual firepower for free-market enthusiasts during the second half of the century, and as the éminence grise behind the dramatic shift in the economic policies that took place after 1980.

At a time when skepticism about markets ran rampant, Friedman explained in clear, accessible language that private enterprise is the foundation of economic prosperity. All successful economies are built on thrift, hard work, and individual initiative. He railed against government regulations that encumber entrepreneurship and restrict markets. What Adam Smith was to the eighteenth century, Milton Friedman was to the twentieth. FULL POST

Americans have divided opinions when asked to think broadly about the purpose of government. About as many Americans (35%) prefer an activist government that tries in every way to improve the lives of its citizens as prefer a government that provides only the most basic government functions (37%), with the rest placing themselves between these two positions. FULL POST

About us

The Global Public Square is where you can make sense of the world every day with insights and explanations from CNN's Fareed Zakaria, leading journalists at CNN, and other international thinkers. Join GPS editor Jason Miks and get informed about global issues, exposed to unique stories, and engaged with diverse and original perspectives.